Any opinions on this, it would help to keep the distro smaller I think.
Hi,
I am going to express my opinion, which is based only on what I live with the people I meet with around me. Whereas choice is concerned, less I provide choice to them, the better I am. When they tell me they wish to continue using Google Chrome with they started to use under Windows, I can do something for them. Many don't know what an internet browser is. They think that "they start internet" when clicking on some blue 'e' on the desktop.
Concerning office application, I can't decently provide Abiword, because after I tested the version 2.8 a few years and the version 2.9 beta a few weeks, I could see it's not stable, it crashes, it looses the work, I had *.abw files I could not open anymore, not even with OpenOffice.org (Libreoffice was not yet invented) and later the same happened with the most recent 2.9 beta which is default provided in Debian and Ubuntu repositories.
At a time, after a furious research I found a utmost light Office application which is not known around, and is under GPL : alas not provided in [put here as many distro names as you want] and when I tried to compile it it failed. i sent a mail to the author, who answered once and I never had new again since.
Anyhow light it is, but can't compile and ugly it is too.
Now we can have Libreoffice, or Openoffice. I don't know how Openoffice.org evolved since Oracle gave it to the Apache foundation (2011) because since Libreoffice spread out I used it only, and I am very satisfied with it, it works well, no glitch, no issue whatever.
Therefore either I won't provide anything, or I will provide what I consider being the best available Free software. I can change my mind, and say... you show me that really Openoffice.org is the best, because you can describe actions which can be reproduced, and undoubtedly, it proves this is the best, then I'll provide OOo. If you tell me : he, there is an update to Abiword, with this the changelog : I'll give it a try again!
About the idea of making scripts : as many as you want, but to provide the choice of apps, it already exists under another shape, it has for name meta packages.
About packages : it would be very useful to have people making packages. I am decided to learn packaging, and restart working on:
openbox-menu
make a package for
obsession
and also:
deadbeef, and... jumanji !
and to start as soon as possible. I have found a man who is a Debian developer and accepted to be my mentor for this task. So now the OBubuntu is RC8, next a RC9 because I see one important detail to improve, then I'll leave it alone a few weeks...
If others here think your idea is good, if you really want to do what you have in mind, go ahead. Just I don't think more metapackages out of the package manager ring is likely to be very useful.
